Second Sight
by Iscah McKrae
Summary: Ever wondered why it took quick minded, well read Jess more than a millisecond to reply after he inquired, "Dodger?" and Rory told him to "Figure it out"? ("...Oliver Twist.") That has always niggled at my mind, and so I came up with this story.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: This is prospectively a two-shot story which I just remembered I wrote the first half of. I remembered this while plucking away at the next chapter for EverFixed Mark, so if you happen to be looking forward to that one, good things may soon be underway. Anyhow. I don't have time to edit this one, as the muse is actually letting me get writing done, but I figured you guys wouldn't mind reading this with whatever errors it may contain, while waiting for other updates? Am I right? wrong? LOL. Anyhow...it's a quasi-plausible butterfly of a head canon that started fluttering around my brain in connection with stuff I'd written for House Rules, and how that piece of the storyverse could have impacted, and partially explained a bit of the wonderfulness that is Literati. Hope you enjoy. I'd love to hear what you think. :)**_

_**P.S. Experimenting with writing in the first-person. It feels very strange, but *shrug* for some reason it seemed to fit this story.**_

_****__Chapter 1 - The First Time_

I was never supposed to believe in something as corny, ridiculous and unrealistic as love at first sight. I mean, what is it really? You form a lifelong, deep, meaningful relationship based on...looks. It always seemed pretty shallow to me. Sure, maybe something in their eyes, or the way the stood, or the way they dressed, could tell you_ something about them_...but, how much, really?

But, I get it now. That's not quite how it happened to me. Not technically. Technically, it was second sight. And, I'm not talking about some kind of ESP or sixth sense. I mean, literally, it was the second time I saw her - not the first. The first time I saw her... The first time... She did stick in my head. No mistaking that. Anybody you remember eight years later when you only talked to them for about ten minutes when you were nine years old...they made an impression. She definitely made an impression.

The first time I saw her was when I'd come to stay with my uncle when I was nine years old. It was summertime, and anybody that asked was deliberately given the impression by my uncle that I was there for summer break. Neither one of us knew how long I was staying, but neither one of us wanted to say the real reason I was there. My mom was back on the drugs. Luke - my uncle - had come because we'd gotten kicked out of our apartment, 'cause it was totally wrecked. It was mostly my mom's ex-boyfriend who trashed the place, but he was long gone. Or, at least, I thought he was. So did she. He took off anyway, and left us to get thrown out of the place because we couldn't pay the past-due rent, and when the landlord tried to collect, he saw the state the apartment was in, and that was that. Liz called Luke on a pay-phone, 'cause he was the knight-in-shining-armor that always bailed her out when she asked. And when he came... Took him awhile to find us, 'cause that afternoon she managed to hook up with her dealer and score some cheap stuff that had her flying high, and a roof for as long as it would last us. He hated kids and only agreed that I could stay there on the condition that I stay out of his sight. Did my best. Anyway...when Luke finally found us, he had a fit over the state Liz was in, and I thought he was gonna clobber the dealer. Glad he didn't, 'cause even though Luke maybe could've taken the guy...that wouldn't have been the last of it. So, anyway...Luke managed to drag Liz out of there and get her butt into rehab. I went home with him. So, yeah... Neither of us knew how long I was gonna be staying.

That was the summer I read _Oliver Twist_ for the first time. And, being a dumb kid I took all the "right" lessons from it. I didn't want to turn into anything like Bill Sykes or Fagin, but living with Liz, I was in need of a few survival skills, and they had some pointers for me on that front. I wasn't stupid enough to try for six-finger-discounts in stores. There were too many security cameras, etc. etc. for my liking. But, I was pretty good at reading people...the sort of people who were too distracted to notice what was going on around them...who were easily enough distracted to pilfer things off of. I was a little proud of how good I got at it. I was also more than a little surprised that Luke, who was usually pretty oblivious, and usually pretty easy to put things past, caught me red handed... Not right away, mind you. I'd been staying there awhile and had gotten away with it, um...a lot, actually. So, to say that I was in "trouble with a captial 'T'" would be a mastry of understatement. Suffice it to say that my uncle made certain that pickpocketing was _not_ an activity I'd be anxious to repeat. Among the penalties imposed was a stint of yardwork for each of the people whose property I had stolen. Took...a _long_ time.

That was how I came to first see: _her_.

I was working in the yard of a very short lady with a very tall husband. Something about the two of them reminded me of Muppets. Sounds crazy, I know. The lady was nice enough, though kind of eccentric. Her voice was really gravelly and it sounded like she was perpetually shouting...and she pinched my cheek at some point in the conversation where Luke was telling her about the yardwork he was requiring me to do. He made me tell her (and all the others) about the stealing, which was one of the more painful parts of the process. But, he told them about the yardwork. I have no idea why she pinched my cheek. It didn't make much sense, really. What? She found it adorable that I'd taken her wallet out of her purse while she was 'awwing' over a box full of puppies some teenager was trying to find homes for? That was cute to her? I dunno. She brought me lemonade and cookies while I was working, too. I thought that was really weird. Didn't she get that this was supposed to be punishement? I stole her stuff. Gave her a perfect right to hate me. Didn't make any sense. Though, I gotta say, drinking lemonade after cookies...not exactly the most pleasant thing. Very sour. So, maybe she just had a very bizarre sense of_ culpae poena par esto_...something about not being able to enjoy something stolen, that which seems sweet turning sour... Yes. I know I'm grasping at straws here - for no apparant reason. The woman definitely wasn't that philosophical.

In any case, the cheek-pinching cookie lady had gone back inside; and I was examining the various kooky yard decorations and still puckering from the lemon aftertaste that wouldn't go away, when she came up and started talking.

It startled me a little, but I tried to hide it.

She asked me what I was doing.

I started talking about _Oliver Twist_ and the inconsistencies of fiction vs. reality. In retrospect, the discrepancies I was talking about weren't really there. The grown-ups in _Oliver Twist_ - or, at least the ones that weren't robbers themselves - really didn't tolerate stealing. I guess what I was comparing was the outcome that eventually awaited Oliver. He learned how to steal and ended up finding the family that he had lost, and basically having his whole life fall into place...even though he helped the worst of the villains break into his grandfather's house. I, on the other hand, practiced this same disappearing act, and got royally busted for it. I didn't go into all that, exactly, but the gist was that things don't work out in real life the way they do in books, with Oliver as a case-in-point.

She countered that the same sort of thing applied to _Tom Sawyer_, with the way they'd gone and hid out on their island, and also about testifying against Injun Joe. In real life, they would have ended up on a milk carton, and then later, in a witness protection program. I was about to agree when she started talking about how much more realistic_ Huckleberry Finn_ was, even if Huck always thought the good things he did were really bad, and the bad things were good.

I was thinking how the way Huck thought about things was about the way I did...even if I understood the parts he got wrong, but it wouldn't have come out right if I'd tried to say it, and before I could figure it out, she'd changed subjects anyway.

She was talking about the house next door that her mom was looking at. She liked the yard, and especially the trees, and thought it would be nice to live in a big house. She told me how she and her mom lived in a potting shed on the property of the place her mom worked, but that her mom made it like a house, even if it was really little. They'd been looking at houses all around town, but she thought she liked this one best so far. She talked really fast.

Before I knew it, she was talking about the various lawn decorations that I'd been looking at when she walked up. She started naming them. The deer was Felina (at least a touch more creative than Bambi). And she said that the gnome with the pipe reminded her of Santa Claus, which made her think of 'Jingle Bells,' and she'd just been reading about the man who wrote 'Jingle Bells,' whose name was James Pierpont, so she figured Pierpont was a good name for that one. She talked so fast it made me dizzy. I was still pondering over the leap from gnomes to songwriters when she asked what we should name the girl gnome with the curled, pointed shoes.

The first thing that came to mind was Thumbelina, along with _why we were naming this lady's lawn ornaments?_ and how unoriginal that seemed. It was an Andersen character, but still, there had to be something better.

I just barely heard the voice calling, but the way she leapt up snapped me out of the contemplation of gnome names.

"I've gotta go!" she announced breathlessly, as she turned away. She broke into a run, going back to the place from which she'd come, and before disappearing she tossed over her shoulder, brightly, "It was nice meeting you!"

I stood there watching her go. And I realized, she hadn't. Met me. Not exactly. I didn't know her name. She didn't know mine.


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N: It's taken me quite awhile to finish the second chapter, partially because one of my wonderful reviewers made me rethink the context of this story, which took a portion of it in a completely different direction. My delay, for once, kind of fits...because, this is told in first person, and I really doubt it's a story Jess would be eager to finish telling. ;-)**_

_**Hope you enjoy. On with the story:**_

Okay, yeah, you're right. I never finished my story. I told you about the 'first sight' and the lawn gnomes and never got around to the non-ESP 'second sight' thing. I was sort of hoping you'd forget. Yeah, I know.

The second time I saw her was the next time I came to stay with my uncle. I was seventeen. Yes, that means I hadn't gone to see my uncle in eight years. Long story. The short version: _my mother_. As usual. I'd really rather not go into it, 'cause the time before it was drug rehab, and this time was worse. Don't ask. Far as anybody in town knew, I was an out-of-control rebel my mom shipped off to stay with Luke so he could 'reform me.' My mother's mind is a very interesting place, and her explanations for things-priceless. They do _wonders_ for a person's reputation.

Anyhow, from the time my uncle met me at the bus the day I got there, he was acting…eerily unlike Luke. The expression pod-Luke came to mind. It was almost like he was deliberately practicing how to be a doormat. And, at least as far as _I_ was concerned, that wasn't Luke.

I hoped that it was just him being weirded-out because I wasn't a kid anymore and he didn't know what to do with that-that it was just awkwardness. It seemed like more than that, but I was holding my breath hoping that was all it was. After all, he _was_ from the same gene pool as my mother, and as I said…her mind is…_interesting_.

I decided to stay out of his sight for awhile and hoped things would become normal, given time. After I wandered around a town that was even more freakish than I remembered it (granted, when I'd come before, I didn't really leave the house much other than the ill-fated attempts at sleight of hand and the subsequent stints of yard work), I came back to the diner where my uncle worked.

You know-I'm getting off track. I'm not sure how to tell this right…. Anyway-there was this woman there, at the diner; and she acted like she owned the place, and like there was some reason I should be getting to know her. I could only figure she was trying to pull some kind of _you better get used to me being around 'cause I just might be your aunt someday_ act-and again, having grown up with my mother, I was more than used to the _adult love interest trying to get on the kid's good side, at least at first_ routine. I knew my part. Stand there and nod until the first opportunity came to get out from underfoot and let them go through the motions of pretending they liked me to the parent/guardian figure.

I rolled my eyes as I walked up the stairs to the apartment above the diner. _Good luck making my life a living hell. You're a rank amateur and I can make this much harder for you than you can for me. You don't know what you're dealing with._

From the way my uncle was acting when he finally came up to the apartment, it was pretty obvious that pod-Luke was there to stay. I tried getting a rise out of him, smoking in the apartment, offering him a game of poker…_sheesh!_ he even lied to my mom for me so I wouldn't have to talk to her on the phone! The uncle I knew would have exploded through a hole in the roof over any of that. Instead, he sat down and started telling me about diner-woman and an invitation to dinner at her place…_to make me feel more at home there. Oh, here we go-she's laying it on thick._

Evidently this woman had a daughter Luke thought I'd like, because, in his words, she was "a lot like" her mother, but she had "a slightly better grip on reality." _So…on top of everything else, the woman was crazy…but, her daughter was slightly less so. That's just great. Just what I needed was some more of that._

I tried to get out of it. With doormat pod-Luke in charge, I figured it wouldn't take a great deal of effort or imagination. I just made sure I was in the shower when it was time to go. Luke shouted at me through the bathroom door, and I pretended not to hear him over the water. When he opened the door and kept shouting, I told him it'd take me awhile to get ready and that he should leave the address and go on without me. (Not being able to find the place would be a plausible excuse for never showing up.) But, pod-Luke or not, he was very insistent that we go together, and that we go as close to on-time as possible, meaning that I had better get my butt in gear. No way I was getting out of going to this little dinner party. Still, I figured I could find a way to skip out early, no sweat.

When we were walking over there, the sun was already going down, and it was halfway dark. Still - the neighborhood seemed…familiar somehow…like I'd been there before. I didn't have a lot of time to think about it, 'cause we were late and Luke was anxious to get there. When the door opened, the possibly crazy woman was standing there, and I could tell from the conversation that my hunch was right. She definitely liked Luke, and Luke definitely liked her. My uncle was being all dopey and awkward around her, and I didn't want to actually wreck a good thing he had going…if it was a good thing, so I tried to be polite. They kept talking and I wandered into the house and looked around.

There were pictures on the mantle piece, cutesy family-type pictures of lots of different people. One of them, near the middle, caught my eye. It was a girl about my age; and something about it gave me that strange empty-stomached déjà vu feeling that I'd gotten when we were walking up the street. I'd seen her somewhere before. I'm sure you've figured out who she was already, but I was going on some pretty hazy memories at that point; and the girl in the picture was a lot older than nine.

In a second, I was introduced all around-not many people, just two more in the kitchen, and no sign of the girl…till her mother turned and I saw her sitting there at a desk in her bedroom behind me.

She wasn't real. I can't even explain it. She was sitting there completely open and completely innocent and looking at a stranger just like a little girl would, a little shy but completely trusting. I had to turn away because there was something about her I could hardly look at. So, I looked at her books. At first it didn't seem like that many. More than most girls, maybe, but not that many. I joked about her reading, but before I could even try to mock to cover up the way I couldn't look at her and make it seem normal, I saw a book I had practically in shreds back in my duffel bag at Luke's, 'cause I'd read it so many times. I'd scribbled all over its pages, trying to figure it out - piecing it together-and there it was on her shelf. I reached out with the strange feeling in my gut that I was going to open it and find her soul. I was going to find her scribbled all over the pages and spilling over…and that would just be too strange.

But, the pages were blank. Pristine. The spine was creased, so I could tell she'd read it, but it didn't give me any clues…except maybe that same innocence I'd seen _un_written all over her face when I walked in the room. Maybe she was a little too innocent. And maybe I didn't want to change that, even if there was a part of me that wanted to see the margins of every page written in crosswise and with words tumbling all over each other, both her handwriting and mine-thoughts mingling and fighting each other and turning into one voice. One thought.

It took me a second to realize that she'd asked me something. She asked me if I read much. That was too close to all the stuff jumbling in my head, so I just told her no, not much. She told me I could borrow the book if I wanted to. Again…to close to all that mess in my head, so I didn't tell her that I didn't need to borrow it. I already had it. I already had memorized lots of it. Lots of it, frankly, didn't mesh with the pure innocence of this little girl trust and the little girl room all around me. It was kind of a gritty book, to be honest, and…that meant that there was more to her than met the eye-more to her that I needed to find out. Like whether she'd been abducted by aliens and changed into a purple monkey…"

In the hallways, people hurried, footsteps scraping and whispering on the shiny white floor. Bustling quiet was punctuated by beeping intercoms and muffled notifications. Jess had a hunch she'd fallen asleep several sentences ago at least. Her large eyes had drifted closed several times while he was telling the story, but she could have just been resting them, listening. The shoulder and sheets rising and falling at steady intervals and the utter lack of reaction to aliens and monkeys-he waited…no response-told him that the story had lulled her to sleep. She'd ask for the "end" later.

Breath felt heavy in his lungs as he stepped closer, his gaze sweeping across the jagged, pulsing lines and shifting digital numbers, across the tubes that carried her breath, and her medicine, across the pale velvet of her cheek and the fine strands of light brown hair wisped across her face. His lips tightened as he gulped down his Adam's apple, fingers lifting involuntarily to brush aside the soft, silken threads from where they were tumbling near her closed eyes.

He heard a smile come from the doorway, the small exhalation of air that said his actions were sweet and that he'd been caught in them. He turned and saw Sasha standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb in a posture that indicated she'd been standing there a little while. At his gaze shifting toward her the spread of her lips widened in a long line and one thumb tucked into the pocket of her blue jeans.

Jess ducked his head, nibbling at his lower lip before his eyes met hers. His words were cracked and quiet. "She wanted me to tell her a story."

Sasha kept the remnants of a smile with a tentative nod. Her usually sparkling eyes were dull and sunken from worry and sleeplessness. He'd never seen her without mascara or eyebrow pencil before. The golden brows and lashes almost vanished against her fair skin, making her look even more worn and pale than she actually was.

"You're a good brother," she told him, stepping forward, one hand raking through her short-cropped hair and pulling at the ends. The tired smile that accompanied the words pressed warmly. She'd never referred to him as Lily's brother before, even though there was a gold band circling her left ring finger that hadn't been there when they'd met. Lily's "order" hadn't been filled to date, but Sasha and Jimmy were still relative newlyweds.

It had been a small, casual wedding out on the beach with only Lily, the minister and one of Sasha's friends. Sasha had called to tell Jess and ask if he wanted to come, but it was too short-notice, and other obligations made it impossible to pull off that long a trip. He'd promised to visit as soon as he could…which was what this was…what it had started out to be.

They'd been having a barbecue on the beach, courtesy of _The Inferno_ with some friends visiting from Oregon when it happened.

Lily and a couple of her friends were horsing around in the sand, so at first everyone thought it was a joke, thought she was being tickled, over-dramatic…but Jess had been closer, saw her face go rigid, and a cold wave gripped his stomach. His fingers had dialed 9-1-1 before his brain completely caught up to what was happening.

The next several hours had been nothing but panic and blur-sirens and gurneys, and exchanging sand and sea for freeways and parking lots and claustrophobic, ultra-sanitized, hurry-up-and-wait. Doctors seemed to have plenty of _what_ but very little _why_. They defined the episode as a grand mal or tonic-clonic seizure, and none of the possibilities were good. Her blood sugar tested within normal range, and she had no recreational drugs in her system, so the least frightening of the possible causes the doctor initially mentioned had been ruled out. The words _epilepsy, stroke, lesion_, and _tumor_ were far from comforting. The word _idiopathic_ was like salt in a wound. Trust doctors to have a complex, intimidating term for _we have absolutely no idea_.

Sasha would have been there round the clock if Jess hadn't insisted she and Jimmy go eat someplace-get away from it all-and, over 24 hours later, that she needed to sleep, or she'd keel over and be admitted as a patient. Jimmy had taken her, but here she was, back already, after less than a couple of hours.

"What happened to resting?" he accused, gently acerbic.

Her limp, eyelids, skin translucent and with a darkness and shine not caused by cosmetics, drooped closed as he raised her eyebrows with a heart-weary shrug of one shoulder and a sigh betraying frustration that she couldn't pretend to be anything but as exhausted as she was. "Couldn't sleep."

He nodded at her, shallowly and with an expression that generally coincided with a head shaking in the other direction.

"What was the story?" she deflected with tired ease.

"The story that has no end," he responded with a lackadaisical drawl, _don't care_ trying to cover up _sadness_. He didn't know why he bothered trying to hide things from Sasha. Even when she was this tired and this preoccupied, it was an exercise in futility.

"Is there a boneless chicken in it?" she asked, smiling at her own joke as he half rolled his eyes, a little rueful that she'd caught the lyrical reference he'd barely alluded to, lips twisting at the _blasted_ fruitlessness of trying to deny it, since that would only _prove_ the obscure hippy-trippy reference had been deliberate.

"Maybe," he half conceded.

"Anything change?" she asked, looking up at the monitors hooked up to her daughter by half a dozen or more wires and glancing over at the charts on the wall.

"Nah…" he shook his head. "No random beeping. Not even a nurse checking up on things or waking her up to take a sleeping pill," he assured her, lips curling mildly at the standard irony. Sasha nodded, keeping her eyes on the teenage frame in the shiny, silver barred bed, swathed in white with too many tubes. "Speaking of which, you should try one of those," he reprimanded with raised eyebrows, causing her to look up at him with a deep intake of air, expelling it a second later.

"Sure, doc. I'll take two pills and call you in the morning." Even as she said it, she took the seat by Lily's bedside that Jess had previously occupied.

His eyebrows raised further and more deliberately, looking down at her with disapproval-but, she didn't notice. A yawn stifled itself into a sigh so he wouldn't betray his hypocrisy, or give her any excuses not to let him take a shift while she _got some rest_. But, she was immovable. Jess slumped into the ancient cream colored armchair by the window, festooned with all the extra pillows Lily had tossed aside while trying to get comfortable.

He watched the penetrating falcon gaze, attending, scrutinizing, guarding every breath and every heartbeat. He watched the pulsing green line…regular…reassuring. He watched the shadows and reflections in the hall and listened to the intercom. And he watched the heavy, crescent shadows fall.

_**A/N: Transition any good? Yes, of course the first person narrative isn't finished. I'm experimenting with different methods of story-telling and I'm very curious to know your reactions to this.**_

_**Bonus points if you know what the "boneless chicken" reference was about. ;-) In fact, if you can guess right, there's a prize in it for you.**_

_**I've mostly planned this story to the end, and there will probably only be 1-2 more chapters. But, you, my dear readers, know that I put a lot of weight into your opinions. Anything you're anxious to know about, or that you think would fit in here just beautifully?**_

_**Talk to me. ;-)**_


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